How following protocol can create disruptions, or, where the hell are my keys

I presume the following situation is something many of my neurodivergent friends can relate to (and possibly some normies as well) but I still think it’s worth it for me to talk about. Partly because its such a common occurrence but primarily because it illustrates the problems with well-intentioned systems that unfortunately end up doing more harm than good.

I was preparing to head out. I’d gotten dressed, collected all my things and put on my shoes and jacket, all I needed were my keys. But when I looked at my desk where I usually drop them they weren’t there. Alright, maybe they’re in my jacket? They weren’t, but I found the following: my brown pair of gloves that I started wearing weeks ago because I’d lost my left black glove, and my lost left black glove. No keys though.

I checked my other coats and jackets despite not having worn them for over a month, nope. They weren’t in my pants pockets, my other pants pockets, my sweatpants… Maybe my roommate had borrowed them? Nope. At this point I was getting a bit agitated. Frustrated because I couldn’t find my keys and warm form running around searching. I scanned my surroundings one last time, even checked under the bed and moved stuff around on the desk to make sure the keys weren’t hiding underneath something but no. I conceded defeat, undressed, and started cleaning, systematically going through everything and every place not just looking for the keys but also undoing some of the disorder that comes with just existing.

Imagine my dismay when I finally found the keys in the little basket specifically designated to hold my keys, wallet, passport, and other everyday carry items. I even remembered congratulating myself for putting them in their spot for once.

So, what happened here? In my opinion, this is an example of bad system implementation. The core concept is good, each thing has its own place, keeps things organized. However there comes a point where that system becomes more disruptive than helpful. Take holiday decorations for example. Most of the year they live in a box deep in a closet or similar and are only brought out very occasionally. And the same goes for most things. They spend most of their time not actively being used. But on the other extreme there are mobile phones. I presume most people carry their phones on their person most of the time. It doesn’t have one dedicated spot where you put it away when you clean, rather it exists in a perpetual, more or less in use, state.

I want to propose that most things can be put on what I’m going to call a ‘use frequency spectrum’, and the more frequently you use something, the more prone you are to lose it. I misplace my phone several times a day, but usually it takes only a few minutes to find it since the time between setting it down and realizing that I need it is quite short. But the keys… they only get used a few times a day, and when I don’t leave the house very often as little as a few times a week! And the obvious impulse is to give them a spot where they live, where you can put them so you don’t loose them but in the time it takes between unlocking the door, undressing, especially if you have groceries that need to be put away I’ve had uncountable opportunities to just put my keys somewhere because I need both hands free and rarely, if ever is it in the key basket. Most often they end up on my desk, or in my pants or jacket. And by the time I realize that I need them I have no idea where they are.

There are a whole bunch of items that exist in a limbo on the use frequency spectrum. Not as often as my phone but often enough that trying to put them away creates more problems than it solves. A sounder strategy would be to create a system that works with established patterns of behavior instead of working against them. I’ve already done this with frying pans. Yes, just follow along.

I cook basically almost every day, but whenever I’d finish, I would just leave the pan in the sink because my scattered brain had already moved on. I never cleaned the pan or put it away as I had intended to, instead it just sat there until the next time I needed it so instead I just… let it sit on the stove. If it wasn’t super gross of course. This freed up space both in my head and my sink for other things.

Now, this isn’t perfectly analogous to misplacing your keys, but it’s an example of one of those items on the use frequency spectrum that fall in that in between limbo, and how I’ve adjusted my system to work along side my brain and behavior instead of fighting it. The same could be done for the keys. I could move the basket from my shelf to my desk, or decide the keys live permanently in the jacket, or something else I’ve not thought of yet. I’ll have to experiment.

Instructions unclear

Content warning: excruciating over-analysis of a school assignment and how it demonstrates the communication issues I face in a neuro-typical world.

“What climate issues do you consider most prioritised? Why?”

This is a question from one of my school assignments. Seems pretty straightforward… so why did it cause me to almost tear my hair out?

A common sentiment in media and society in general is that people on the autism spectrum (like me) see and interpret the world differently from neuro-typicals. Some call it a crippling disability, others a superpower, personally I settle for ‘a mode of functioning that deviates from the norm’. It’s not better or worse, just different. However, when there is no consideration taken to the fact not everyone falls within the norm, things can get difficult for those who fall outside of it.

This is not ground-breaking analysis and I bet anyone reading this who’s in some way differently-abled just had their eyes roll to the back of their scull (sorry), but it’s important to point out. When things just work for you it’s easy to become oblivious and not realise how it might not for others. While I can cross the street in a few seconds, someone in a wheelchair might have to take a long detour to find somewhere they can get down the curb. And while it’s a lot easier to demonstrate this lack of consideration and its effects with physical ability rather than mental, the principle is the same. This question is my curb. Let’s analyse.

What’s the point of a question like this? To prompt students to write something that’s relevant to the study material, or in other words, its an instruction from the teacher that explains what they expect the students to write about.

So why do questions like this cause me problems? Two reasons: first, because I interpret the world in a way that falls outside of the norm and 2: because of that I’ve trained myself to constantly second guess myself.

Taking things to literally is a tired trope at this point, but it’s definitely rooted in reality. People on the spectrum can struggle with metaphors, subtext, tone of voice and so on, luckily that’s rarely been a problem for me (I hope), however when it comes to instructions, especially school assignments that ability completely breaks down. I can’t tell you how many times this has screwed me over, forced me to rewrite my work or outright lowered my grades.

First of all, there are no instructions of what sort of text is expected of me. I’m just assumed to already know or intuit that by myself. Not even a word count is given.

“What climate issues do you consider most prioritised? Why?”

To me, the intuitive thing is to write a short, concise response that answers the question as clearly as possible. But no. After learning that I cannot rely on intuition, instead asking teachers to explain in detail what they expect of me at the start of any course, I now know I’m supposed to write a university style paper, with a title, introduction conclusion and sources.

Second: what does this question even mean? A literal reading could be to analyse the current political situation in regards to climate change, what issues are considered important and its literally what the question is asking for, however that leads to a bunch of unanswered follow-up questions, primarily ‘prioritised by whom, and where?’ Citizens? Politicians? Industry and business? Locally? Nationally? Internationally? Also, the explicit mention of my own opinion is a bit out of place so maybe what the question is actually after is what climate issues I personally think are most important to address? Then it makes sense why they’re asking for my own opinion but in that case, wouldn’t it say ‘should be’ rather than just ‘most prioritised?’

Initially the literal interpretation feels more intuitive, however asking for my opinion makes no sense and I’ve learned I can’t trust my intuition anyway. Simultaneously I notice the alternate interpretation and while it on one hand seems more reasonable, considering the choice of words ‘do you consider’, on the other it would force me to literally imagine words that are not there to make the syntax work. Maybe it’s just a careless error, a mistype but I can’t assume that, especially about words that change the entire meaning of the sentence. Experience also tells me a neuro-typical person probably would read it the second way rather than the first but would they really go against what’s explicitly written? They can’t be that stupid, or language blind. Although it’s not uncommon to imply words and meaning without explicitly writing it out, maybe that’s what’s happened, although then these other three interpretations also become valid…

This is a brief look into approximately what goes on in my mind while looking at this question, and it goes on like this until nothing makes sense anymore, similarly to when you repeat a word over and over until it just becomes meaningless noise.

To confirm that this isn’t just me being stupid I asked some friends how they would interpret the question. An unscientific method and a small sample-size is by no means enough to draw any conclusions, but it confirms that it’s not just me. Most of my neuro-typical friends interpreted the question along the lines of “What climate issues do you think should be prioritised” while those on, or suspected to be on the spectrum tended to complain that the question made no sense or gave the literal interpretation “what climate issues are being prioritised”.

The question is vague, has multiple interpretations or contains an unnoticed mistake yet none of this is a problem because the neuro-typical brain fills in the gaps, extrapolates and still draws the right conclusion because its on the same wavelength. Mine isn’t. I hyper focus on the minutiae, the smallest details and most subtle nuances of language trying to extract as much information as I can. Where it is missing, I cannot fill in the blanks because I imagine several, equally valid alternatives. Where there is uncertainty, I conceive of multiple, equally valid interpretations. Where there is ambiguity, my imagination has a field day. I’m left with countless versions of the same question and only one of them will lead me to the essay my teacher wants me to write.

I don’t want to have to ask my teachers to interpret every single question, explain every single assignment, just as the person in a wheelchair doesn’t want to ask for help each time they need to get down the curb. It makes me feel stupid. And just as they shouldn’t have to take a long detour I shouldn’t have to go though THAT on a regular basis. Small things can be of enormous help, like ramps or raised crossings. What my equivalent might be we’ll have to save for an other time, because this is getting far to lengthy.

That time a pankake almost drove me to tears

For as long as I can remember, food has been an important part of my life. I enjoy eating it and most of all, i enjoy coocking it. For the longest time however I’ve not been able to put my finger on exactly why coocking gives me so much pleasure and happiness. I’ve come up with several explanations over the years, that it is a creative outlet, that it’s meditative or even an exercise in mindfullness. None of these however feel genuine, they’re more like an attempt at justifying a hobby to others that don’t get what I get out of the practice.

Now don’t get me wrong, the statements mentioned earlier are still true, I do find cooking to be a meditative experience and it does allow me to stretch my creative muscles, but they don’t truly account for the strong emotional bond I have to food. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a particular YouTube video that made me realize what it is that really keeps my passion for cooking alive.

In their video What’s the point of cooking at home anymore? food YouTuber and journalist Adam Ragusea poses the question if coocking at home makes any sense in a modern, industrialised world where food scarcety is a distant memory and a meal prepared for you is as cheap or cheaper than making it yourself. They go over some very intresting points, I highly reccomend watching it but in the final minutes of the video, when statistically most viewers would have already clicked away, Adam starts talking about their own relationship to cooking. That it’s not simply a mechanism to refuel our flesh machines, but its a cultural crossgenerational link, a living artifact and reminder of from where we came and a reassurance that a part of us will carry on into the future. “The stove is the shrine where I convene with my ancestors”.

It’s important to me to keep those cultural roots well maintained. Not because I belive that I should be proud of where I’ve come from, but because I personally want to stay in touch with my cultural and familial heratige. Why? For one, I just think that diversity is neat and if I have some cultural diversity lurking in my ancestry you bet I’ll incorporate it in my life. Second, some foods are the bonds that keep me connected to the people and memories that are important to me, which brings us to the titular pankake.

While many of the foods that I cook hold no more significant place in my mind other than that I enjoy their taste or the technical challenge of making said food, there are are some that are special. They do not only ground me in a loose sense of cultural beloning but are also loaded with personal meaning, memories and nostalgia. Whenever I make Borsh (beat and vegetable soup) or Vareniki (slavic dumplings) I’m taken back to my grandparents appartment in Kiev, to loud obnoxious new year celebrations with extended family and friends sitting around the diningroom table or to lunch in the tiny kitchen while granma or granpa told stories from ww2. Whenever I make waffles I’m taken back to weekend mornings with mom popping them out faster than we can eat them and pankes takes me back to dad doing the same.

So why now? Why the strong emotional response now and not the other countless times I’ve made theese foods? I think the explanation is simple. I now how a greater understanding for why I feel the way that I do about these things, which in turn intensifies the feeling since I’m more aware of it. And ofcourse the simple fact that for the longest time, I’ve lacked the tools to make these pankakes. Now that I can, a flood of nostalgia that’s been building up came crashing down over me.

Coming out

For those who don’t feel like reading my long ramble here is a TLDR:

• I’m coming out as trans. I don’t know what my gender identity is yet, but I am certain I am not cis and that I have some sort of dysphoria.
• My preferred pronouns are they/them (de/dem in Swedish).
• My names are Tanja or Sergej (and you can still call me seal of course!).

I’m in the process of figuring myself out and I want to do it in the open. I don’t know where this road will take me, but I hope you’ll tag along!

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So why am I writing this now? It’s pretty simple really. For one I’ve always tried to be pretty open about what I am going through because I think its important to talk about one’s feelings, emotions and mental state. Realising that one is not happy with one’s gender identity really throws a wrench in the whole well-being machine. Secondly, I am far from sure what it is I actually want, and I need the gender clinics help to figure that out. Since that process is quite lengthy and the waiting times doubly so, I just didn’t feel like hanging around in the closet for that long.

Where do I go from here? With my transition I really don’t know. The first hurdle to overcome is on Tuesday when I have an appointment with a doctor who is going to assess my case and decide if they even should send me to the gender clinic at all. Regarding this blog though I finally feel like I have something new to write about. Over the past few years my mental state has been quite unchanging, so I never really felt like I had any new insights to share. I didn’t want to rethread old ground either so that explains why things have been quiet here for a while. Going forward however I shall try to go over all the thinking I’ve done over the past few months and of course share any new insights, starting with where I am right now.

Looking back, I’ve realised that I’ve probably unknowingly been questioning my gender identity for a while, I actually started going by gender neutral pronouns and calling myself agender as far back as 2013 and have since played around with bending my gender expression. It wasn’t until this year though that it clicked for me that there might be something more going on. Signs I had overlooked or ignored showed themselves in a new light and feelings I had suppressed kept bubbling up and it all got to a point where I no longer could ignore it. I had to do something about it and I got in touch with a doctor to start the process of figuring out what the hell is going on inside my head.

Does that mean that I am trans? Yes, technically. As long as you do not identify with the gender you were assigned at birth, you’re trans. Although by that definition I’ve been trans since 2013 and that doesn’t feel right since that decision was based in ideology rather than any deep introspection about how I felt about my gender (but that’s a story for later). This means that over the past few years I’ve hovered in what I can only describe as a grey area or limbo between being cis and trans. As a cis man it felt ridiculous to claim to be trans due to an ideological statement and I suppose that mentality stuck while my feelings about gender identity kept developing underneath that lid.

Why did I then not write this back in January when I managed to unstuck that lid? My best hypothesis is that I had a certain image of what it meant to come out as trans. You have to know what it is you want, have a clear plan, a new name, maybe even begun treatment so it’s just a matter of flicking a switch. My situation could not have been further from that. I had just unearthed years of feelings and thoughts I subconsciously had suppressed, I had no idea what I was feeling, I was confused, a bit scared but most of all, not the kind of trans person I thought I had to be to be “allowed” to come out. I still don’t really have a plan, but the worst storm has calmed down and I’ve realised that there is no one right way to come out, only the one that feels right for me.

This feels right for me. I like sharing and writing helps me, or rather forces me, to sort out my thoughts to be able to put something coherent down for others to read. I can’t force myself to be someone who I am not while I wait, while I’m figuring myself out. I must be honest and true to myself about who I am right now. And right now I am Tanja, or Sergej, or Seal, confused gendertrash trans person who is going thorough a gender crisis.

A skirt, blouse and bra stuffed with socks almost makes for a convincing woman! Shame the beard had to go though…

The end of the road

Disclaimer, this is not a suicide note. It might look like one, but it isn’t. Not yet at least. Sorry for the clickbait.

So it happened. The thing I was afraid of all those years ago happened. Let me elaborate. When I first embarked on the long road of trying to sort out my mental issues there was one thought in the back of my mind that kept bugging me. ‘What if nothing can be done? What if this is the way it’s going to be for the rest of my life?” I tried to push it away, out of my head and while I was caught up in all of the visits to psychiatrists, doctors and experts it didn’t bug me. I was seeing professionals. I was getting help. I was walking through the tunnel, expecting it to reveal the light behind every twist and bend I approached. But as I walked and walked the tunnel was as dark as ever. I kept walking. I kept going to my meetings, I saw a therapist regularly, I got my Asperger diagnosis, I felt like I was laying the ground work for further things to be built upon.

That didn’t happen. After a year I was denied further contact with my therapist unless I paid out of my own pocket. I was dropped by the agency that helped me with the parts of being an adult I struggled with (mostly contact with government agencies, school applications, formal stuff). I was denied financial compensation for continued studies and I can’t apply for long-term sick leave because I don’t have anything to take sick leave from.

Nothing I tried worked. Therapy made me slightly less miserable but that’s about it. And through out this experience I’ve come to realise why it is that I feel so god damn shitty. I am to aware of how horrible this world is. It’s really unfortunate that one of my “special interests” as someone with Asperger is politics and our future as a community, society and species. People constantly tell me that I can’t carry the world on my shoulders. That I have to stop constantly thinking about it. But it’s really hard when literally everything you do somehow impacts the world around you, and everything that happens in the world impacts you. It’s nothing I can turn off. I can try to drown my hyper awareness by keeping myself busy, overload my brain with podcasts, YouTube videos or videogames, or literally drown it out with alcohol or smoke it out with weed. But even that can’t do it.

I spend most of my time doing some sort of political activism. Sometimes it’s very direct like going to or planing for demonstrations and protests, sometimes it’s more indirect, by building and nurturing communities that foster freedom and solidarity.

The podcasts and YouTube videos I consume are mostly political and those who aren’t are about videogames, a shitty industry that’s like a microcosm of society at large.

And no. Don’t tell me to just change how I spend my time and what media I chose to consume. These are the things I live for, even though it brings me down. Everything brings me down. You can stick literally anything in front of me and I’ll ruin it for you.

The world leaders are engaged in a race to the bottom and the people are to lazy, comfortable or afraid to do revolt and take matters into their own hands. I’m not worried about our planet. It will live on. Either with humans or without it. Right now it looks like the latter, and nothing I can do will stop it. The working class is still treated like dirt and the automatisation boom that’s just around the corner looks more and more likely to throw us into a late stage capitalism dystopia. Nothing I can do will change that. I still do it, I do everything I can but it is not enough. It’s pointless. It’s really hard to keep fighting, keep the energy up, keep motivating people around me, inspire them, bring entertainment and joy into the world when everything feel so god damn pointless.

Left Unity

I don’t usually talk a lot about politics here, mostly because I think politics is a topic best discussed face to face or in 400 page books, as well as I don’t really think it fits with what I want to do with this blog (that is talking about depression and stuff). However this has been on my mind a lot lately since some conflicts in my organising circles has caused me some psychological distress so I guess this qualifies after all. Anyway:

Over the past few years, the question of left unity has been on my mind a lot. I don’t think I will ever arrive at a complete and whole truth in this matter however here are the conclusions I’ve arrived at so far.

There are some things every leftist can agree on, that we can organise around and work together to achieve mutual goals. Things like:

• Anti-fascism
• Aiding refugees and the homeless
• Workers rights
• Environmental issues

Just to name a few. I gladly organise and work together with leftists of all flavours, even liberals as long as they can respect the radical tendencies in those spaces, organisations, initiatives etc. All lefties also can agree that capitalism sucks and needs to be dismantled. An other world is possible. Etc. Great. Every radical conversation that is held contributes to seeding the idea amongst “the mainstream” that we can break the status quo. However, when time comes to build an anti-capitalist movement, radicalising your workplace, friends and family, when we start to mobilise, go on strike, piece by piece break down the oppressive structures of capitalism, every pretence of left unity goes out of the window for me.

Sure, all (or at least most) leftist share the same end goal. Communism aka a classless, stateless society where every individual is equal. However the difference in how we get there is to great between authoritarians and libertarians. If authoritarians seize power, anarchist organising will be deemed counter-revolutionary. After all, anarchists would view the vanguard party as just an other oppressor to overthrow, and the party in power would do everything in their power to stop them along side the capitalists from hurting the revolution.

If an anarchist revolution would succeed, well, a similar story would develop. Anarchists would exclude authoritarians from their communities the same way they would with capitalists, or at least keep them in check, preventing them from organising.

Now, as an anarchist (and here is where my biases start showing), I believe that should an anarchist revolution succeed, authoritarians would not need to organise because we would have already arrived at the classless, stateless society (or at least be so close that building up the state again would just be silly), however should an authoritarian revolution succeed me and my anarchist comrades would be no closer to communism (power corrupts and all that) and we would be no safer than we are today, arguably even less so because historically communist states have been way more happy to persecute anarchists than liberal states (at least according to my limited knowledge of history).

I know that none of my authoritarian friends would want to harm me or my anarchist comrades. They are all great people and I am very happy to have had the opportunity to get to know them and work along side them. But I also know that they probably won’t be the ones making out the top of “the party”. It will be the most ruthless that climb to the top. Just like in any other hierarchical structure. And those would not bat an eye before ordering us to stop our anarchist organising, forcing us to go underground. They would not bat an eye ordering our persecution, imprisonment and in the worst case, execution.

In conclusion: For short term organising around immediate issues, left unity is great. Long term, in a revolutionary sense, not so much.

A new way home

Sometimes you just have to put your depression on hold and drag your ass out of your room to do something because other people rely on you. At least I have to and most of the time i actually have the ability to do so. Attend a meeting, go to a funeral, meet up with some friends, whatever. And when I’m on my way home, when the depression starts creeping back up I loose my sense of agency. When I’m in a positive head-space I usually am in a rush to get from one place to an other because I simply hate being in transit. I see it as time wasted not doing anything productive. However, when depression sets in, when I loose my agency, when I know I won’t be able to do anything, productive or no, suddenly there is no rush to get home. So I take this opportunity to find a new way.

I’ve lived in the same city all of my life so I have developed my own road network. I know how to get from important locations I frequent of frequented in the past, rarely straying from the paths that connect them. Sometimes there probably is a quicker route but the familiar path is the one taken because none other is considered. This has made me realise that I can’t honestly say that after 21 years here I know my way around town. So the combination of this realisation with not feeling enough lust for life to rush home has taken me down some interesting paths.

I’ve gone down trails leading into the woods I’ve biked past all my life, wondering where they go but never taken the time to explore. I’ve roamed around at midnight in the industrial area, realising it’s much bigger than I previously realised, just to name two examples. And today I went down the other side of the river where there is only old rusty boat yards and a water treatment facility. Sometimes you discover nothing of interest, other times the light is just right and even the rustiest dump can look like a work of art.

Rant regarding high profile suicides

As As someone who spend their days wishing they were dead, there is a certain kind of online posts that have been popping up lately that I find really patronising. I’m sure most have seen one at this point.

Whenever some celebrity or community member takes their life there will always be at least one post calling it to attention and giving you the usual lecture that “if anyone reading this is considering suicide, don’t do it” etc and then provides a list of phone numbers and websites. I know it is with good intentions but it always seems like it makes us out to be some sort of irresponsible, childish morons. I assure you. I know these exist. It doesn’t matter.

I hate myself. I hate the way I look, the way I walk, the way I talk the way I smell, the way I think, the way I interact with people.

I hate literally every thing about every aspect of myself. And the things I do not hate I hate even more because I think I should do better, that I am not good enough. Like my acting. I should do better, I should BE better. Or my writing. I HATE the way I write. I think it sucks.

I love acting. I love writing. But I hate it all the same because the harshest critic is not yourself as many believe, it’s your depressed self.

Sometimes depression comes suddenly. After a traumatic experience. Therapy can definitely help deal with that. Talk about what happened, build strategies etc etc and eventually your healthy again, no longer depressed. Other times it comes slowly and nestles into the core of your being. Depression becomes your new normal. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, but when my friends go to bed tonight they will think of how nice it was at the lake today and what they will do tomorrow, I will go to bed and wish that I don’t wake up.

And then I will wake up and having to go through an other day of this fucking shit all over again. Dealing with my fat overweight ass, unable to do anything long term because my mind is fucking broken, stuck in my room because the heat is killing me, stuck in my room because I have no where else to go, constantly being a burden on my parents, my friends who have to deal with my depressed ass and every one else for being such a socially inept bastard.

And I know these feelings are irrational, that my friends wouldn’t hang out with me unless they enjoyed my company, that my parents would kick me out if they couldn’t support me and that most strangers don’t care enough to remember that someone was a bit awkward. But it doesn’t matter because depression is irrational.

I’ve been feeling like this basically non-stop for the past six years. Every. Single. Day. I see no way out. Therapy doesn’t help and I refuse to let doctors drug me to the point of becoming a zombie.

I know that me dying won’t achieve anything other than take the few things I still enjoy away from me. Like reading, writing, acting or running DnD games for my friends. But I still wish I didn’t have to deal with the mess of a human being I am.

Thank you note to John Bain

PC PC has always been my preferred medium to play games and when I am not playing PC games I’m listening to others talking about PC games. One of them were John Bain. A games and games industry critic.

I’ve followed John Bain and his work for many years. Much longer than any other YouTuber, streamer or podcaster. He was knowledgeable, his thoughts were always well put together and his content well produced. He cared about giving costumers the power to make informed decisions in an industry where the water’s  become muddier and muddier over the years. Our tastes in games were similar so I always turned to him first for his thoughts on the games that were coming out.

When he told his audience in 2014 he had ben diagnosed with bowel cancer my heart sank. No one escapes cancer. Cancer took my grandfather and now it will take my most trusted games critic. It may sound stupid but these people produce thousands of hours of content. Those of us who consume every piece of John Bains critiques, thought-pieces, podcasts, streams etc have spent more time with him than with our best friends. With that context it maybe doesn’t sound so stupid any more. I made peace with the fact that that John Bain only had a few months left. That the steady stream of his opinions would dry up.

Then he beat it the fucking mad man. On the month a year later his cancer was in complete remission. I was over the moon. The impossible had happened. But it was to good to be true. The cancer had moved to the liver and he was given two to three years to live. He got almost four.

This morning I woke up to the news that John “Total Biscuit” “The Cynical Brit” Bain had passed.

I know you will never read this but I have to write it down anyway. You fucking rock, you know that? You were never afraid to speak your mind about the games you were critiquing or speak up when the games industry was was up to some no good shenanigans. I always knew that I could get the facts from you and then your opinion. You never mixed the two.

You were open about your own issues. Your mental health as well as your physical. You weren’t one to hide behind a facade of roses and sunshine. When things were shit you told us, normalising the fact that life can be shit sometimes and that’s okay. The same reason I’m writing this blog. It’s okay to feel shitty. It helped me and many others in our own fights, whatever they may be. We are in this together.

I will not mourn your death. I will celebrate your life. The energy waisted on mourning would be an insult to all the awesome you’ve contributed to my existence and the world at large.

Thank you.

Speaking up

Warning. Longer post, it’s story time.

When I realised I had mental health issues I made a choice. I’m not going to keep quiet about it. I’m going to speak up. I wanted to break the stigmas, the taboos and all the other shit keeping people from being open about their issues. Doing so I hoped to show people who haven’t experienced mental health issues what it can feel like and what it does to you, but most importantly to try to normalise it so that other people who might suffer from similar issues don’t feel so alone and isolated.

Up until now this decision and me acting accordingly has only been something I’ve done for myself. Being honest about how I feel helpt me stay sane and I ressurected my blog to write down my general thoughts and ideas as well as the feelings, emotions, sensations and thoughts I have/feel right as I have an anxiety attack or (lacking a btter word) a depression spiral as a way do deal with them. The hope that someone would learn something or feel better from reading my blog or hear me talk about my issues was always there but never something I seriously considered. Little me teaching someone something? No way. Me having a positive impact on someones life? Never in a million years. Those admirable goals of being a positive change in society were only pretentious excuses to not wear a mask quite as often as I would have to otherwise.

At leat that’s what I thought up until last weekend.

In highschool my mental health (or rather, the lack there of) forced me to change classes from natural sciences to humanities since I was unable to keep up with the pace. I was very open to my new class about where I was coming from and why I still didn’t have the energy to show up to class every day. My classmates were understanding and even though I never really become close friends with any of them I got along well with most of them and actually hit it of quite well with a few (can you say ‘hit it of’ without it implying dating?).

Even though the less intense courses had a slight improvement on my ability to study it was far from enough. After struggling for a year and a half I decided to drop out of highschool having achieved next to nothing. I went on with my life barely sparing a thought to the classmates I left behind, up until last weekend when I ran into one of them at the bar.

After a meeting with a political group we decided to go to a bar and as the evening progresses it gets more and more crowded. Several groups come and go at the table next to us until I notice one of our latest neighbours waves at me. I recognise the face but who is it? I wave back and we both return to the discussions at our respective tables. Of course. Highschool. Now I remember.

Eventually there is some breathing room and we get together at the same table. We exchange plesantries. Ask each other what we’re up to nowadays. The usual. Then they get emotional and tell me how me being open about my problems, talking about it in class and then later writing about them here helped them deal with their own problems.

I know this was exactly the effect I hoped my decision would have, but this was the first time someone told mr about their experiences regarding to my decision. It was overwhelming and beautiful to hear. Even if my decision only helped this one person it has been worth all the strange looks I’ve gotten from people who aren’t used to talking about mental health. All the comments about it not being something you talk about in the public. Because if I don’t talk about it, who will? How else will they get used to it? How else do we normalise mental health issues?